Sometimes, it’s so hard to understand why I got out of bed that morning. Today was one of those days. The kids were wild today, which is odd, because on Mondays, everybody is usually quite subdued. Three things happened today that made me do a double take and wonder if I were stuck in some awful pedagogical nightmare:

1. I hand a paper to a student that says Chapter 4 Practice Problem in large bold letters across the top. The student looks at it and asks, "Is this the chapter 4 practice problem?" Why?!?
2. In animation class, I decided it would be a good idea to review a short exercise about guide layers. I figured the best way to do this would be to have the students walk through a guide layer activity we did about three weeks ago. Before we began the activity, I announced not once, not twice, but three times in my manly teacher voice that "We have already done this activity. I want us to do it again as a review." Not more than thirty seconds after I have made this announcement and written the page numbers on the board did I hear from two different people, "We’ve already done this! Do you want us to do it again?" Why?!?
   
3. During break, I was in the hallway watching the kids file in from sixth period. A big, corn-fed boy comes barreling down the hallway and tackles the water fountain mounted to the wall. It knocks him backwards, and when he bounces to his feet and yells, "Take that you son of a…" As if this once incident wasn’t dumb enough, I have witnessed this no less than four times in the last year. Apparently, that water fountain plays a mean right tackle. Why?
   

I bought a Shop Vac AllAround and I only have one word for it: awesome.  Being the clutzy, messy person that I am, it’s great to be able to vaccuum it up with minimum effort. It’s a powerful little sucker, too. Just for fun, we sucked out the hamster bedding last night, and it gobbled all of it up in less than a minute. I paid around $55 for it at Wal-Mart, and I think it was a fantastic purchase. I figure that maybe our vehicles will now get vacuumed more than two times a year, since the little vac is so easy to carry around…Who’d have thought I could get so freakishly happy about a vacuum. :D

I get lots of jokes in my email, but this one was too good to pass up:

A teenage granddaughter comes downstairs for her date with this see-through blouse on and no bra. Her grandmother just pitched a fit, telling her not to dare go out like that! The teenager tells her "Loosen up Grams. These are modern times. You gotta let your rose buds show!" and out she goes. The next day the teenager comes down stairs, and the grandmother is sitting there with no top on. The teenager wants to die. She explains to her grandmother that she has friends coming over and that it is just not appropriate….. The grandmother says, "Loosen up, Sweetie. If you can show off your rose buds, then I can display my hanging baskets."

So I haven’t been a bachelor for over three months now, but since Beck will be in Lexington until Thursday, I’ll have to revert to my old ways: Nuking something in the microwave to eat, sitting in the dark, not speaking to another human for several hours. It’s weird not seeing Beck: We talk on the phone, but anybody who knows me can tell you I don’t like talking on the phone. (For some reason, talking on the phone is harder for me. My ability to multi-task flies out the window when I have a phone to my ear.)

I know that me and Beck will survive being apart, but I miss the little stuff we do together that I have gotten so used to. Holding Beck for a few minutes in the morning is the thing I’ll miss the most. It was sad when 4:45 rolled around and no smiling little wife walked through the door. Missing her so much will only make Thursday night that much sweeter…When you’re used to having the love of your life with you, though, it seems like a frivolous sacrifice. *sigh*

If you’re advernturous enough to look at hte bottom of the page, you’ll probably see that my hit counters have been reset.  The reason behind this is that I have totally rewritten the hit counter.  The counter is now faster and the statistics it pops out are more specific. It was a little painful to set it to zero, but that counter had some major issues.  After it has been up and running for awhile, I may post the code here for anyone to use.

I will always love you, no matter where I am going or where I have been. I know that the next year is going to be hard on both of us, but I want you to know that I will always been there for you when you need me, no matter where I am. You are the best thing that God ever let happen to me, and I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world. I love you so much and the only way that will change is that my love for you grows more and more each day. Together, we can conquer anything, and hey, it’s only Lexington! Whip it’s butt, Frodo!

So, I’m three weeks into my third year as a teacher.  Even though we’re on a seven period day (instead of the last two years’ block schedule), things are much easier now.  The things that I used to find challenging aren’t so challenging anymore. Coming up with lessons is a breeze (especially since they’re only 45 minutes long per day).  I actually have a filing system going that seems to be working, so my massive paperwork pile is slowly dwindling.  Discipline is a no-brainer. I have an air of control that I haven’t really had previously.  My student base is populated with the good kids I’ve had before, which means they like what I’m doing.The best thing is that I honestly think that I can enact some big change in the community this year.  Sure, I don’t think the whole world is going to change overnight or anything, but I think I’ll be able to see a dent this year.  I’ll let everyone know when I think I’ve made some progress, so if you’re a regular reader, stay tuned!

Rarely do I rant and rave about Internet Explorer on this site. It is especially rare nowadays that I post anything technology related on the blog.  However, given what I have went through in the last two hours, I feel I need to vent to the public at large. I HATE INTERNET EXPLORER! I really wish Microsoft would have gotten the browser right way back in 2001.  Recently, most of the security holes have been patched, however, the boys in Redmond haven’t touched the underlying rendering engine since the browser was launched.  Now, for people who do not develop websites, that’s not really a big deal.  For people like me who strive to build standards-compliant sites that also look nice, IE is like a plague. IE mucks up every standardized computer language that is supposed to make web pages look right no matter how you choose to view them. 

The new position of the navigation bar (just below the main title) took about 20 times longer than it should to implement. Why? BECAUSE IE HAS A BUG DEALING WITH WHITESPACE THAT HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE 1997!  Now, as an experienced web designer, I should have remembered that the bug was there and been able to fix it without a lot of thought.  It has been forever since I attempted the technique I used, so my knowledge of the bug had erroded. But, I got to thinking, why should I have to worry about the bug? IT’S 2006! MICROSOFT, FIX THE DARN THING ALREADY!

I have actually broken a big-time rule of web design: My page doesn’t render the same on all browsers.  In order to see the page exactly how it is supposed to appear, you’ll need to download Firefox. If you’re using Internet Explorer, you’ll probably notice the black navigation bar is skinny.  Well, it’s supposed to be a bit fatter and the links are supposed to be evenly spaced. I decided I wasn’t going to throw my design out the window just because of IE’s bug. I know, I know: Good web designers work around the bugs.  Well, even with the bug, the design is functional. It’s just not as pretty. Oh well, as any of you know, I’ll re-design the site around Christmas.

The Bright Side: I suppose if that’s the only thing I have to complain about, then life must be going pretty good. In fact, that is exactly the case.  Married life is awesome. I love Becca more and more every day, and I don’t care who knows it!  I shall return to my teaching duties in a couple days, and I fully expect this to be the most productive year yet!  I want to do the best job I can do to help my kids achieve as much as I know they can.  One thing’s for sure, though: I now have what every man needs.  A good woman behind him. I LOVE YOU BECCA!

I’m not even sure if all sound cards can still produce MIDI sounds, but if you happen to have a card that can, feast your ears on the following selection of vintage MIDI files!  I have a SoundBlaster Live Value card and most of these sound pretty good. (Be forewarned: A couple are absolute stinkers!)  As I recall, they sounded a lot better on an AWE64, which I assume many of them were composed on.

Note: These MIDIs were found on the Internet in approximately 1998. If the copyright belongs to you, email me and I’ll remove the link.

• 2001: Space Odyssey
• Back to the Future
• Batman (1989)
• Beattlejuice
• Beverly Hills Cop
• James Bond Theme
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Doom Episode 1, Level 1
• Doom Episode 1, Level 2
• Doom Episode 1, Level 3
• Doom Episode 1, Level 4
• Doom Episode 1, Level 5
• Doom Episode 1, Level 6
• Doom Episode 1, Level 7
• Flashdance Theme
• Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Gremlins Theme
• Jurrasic Park
• Mission Impossible Theme
• Mortal Kombat Theme
• Mortal Kombat Theme (Another Version)

As any of my friends probably know, I have gotten horrible at responding to email. I used to love getting email, but in the past few years, it has become an extreme headache because every time I would go to my inbox, there would be a blue-million spam messages. Out of every 100 emails I would receive, maybe two would actually be something I want to read. On top of that, I’ve had at least 4 email accounts at all times (not counting the ones from work). The whole thing was a mess.

I am pleased to announce that I finally found a solution that has put the functionality back into email.  I should have figured out what to do a long time ago, but it never occured to me that all my web email accounts now allow you to forward any messages sent to that address to another account.  (I haven’t checked out the options in most of these accounts in a long, long time.)  Once I figured out how easy it was to have everything forwarded, I decided to use my gmail account to aggregate all my various accounts because I love the spam filter and the Label interface.  I realize the world is quite divided over whether or not Labels are better than traditional folders, but I have found that the ability to assign multiple Labels to one message has really helped me organize things.  I then setup a  filter that applies a  Label to mail as it arrives based on the email address that the mail was originally addressed to.

The results have been fantastic.  I can easily see which account all the mail has come from and I’ve only received one piece of spam (which was easily thwarted with a click of the "Report Spam" button. I checked my email at least 4 times yesterday without fear or dread of spending minutes just tidying up all my accounts.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so receptive to my email. As a result, I may actually get back to my friends and family in a timely manner. Viva la email!